In the Navy

He was talking about the fighters he'd flown in the Navy during World War II. His squadron was the first to fly Corsairs, and he spoke about their design, about their "gull wings."  The Corsair had a very powerful engine which turned a thirteen-foot propeller.  Since the propeller's diameter was so wide, he explained, the nose of the aircraft had to be higher off of the ground than the noses of other fighters, and that meant that the wings were going to be higher off the ground as well.

"So the problem was what to do about the landing gear, which had to be mounted under the wings," he said.  "The wheels still had to be able to touch the ground, of course, but the landing gear also had to be retractable.  But to be retractable, it couldn't be too bulky, or too long."  He took a sip of coffee, seeming to design the plane in his head as he spoke.  "So what they did, they built a wing which sloped downwards" -- delight in his eyes now, excitement, even -- "downwards, toward the ground, so the outer part of the wing was closer to the ground, and that's where they put the landing gear."

I asked him if the gull wings made it harder to handle the plane.

"Well, you know, once you got it up in the air, it was a smooth ride, wonderful.  And it could outrun anything around at that time.  But takeoffs were tricky.  And landings were very tricky, because you're landing this plane, you know, on an aircraft carrier, and with the Corsair, you had to land just right or they bounced around.  And if they bounced too many times, you wouldn't be able to slow down fast enough and you'd careen right off the front of the ship and into the ocean."  There was nothing macho about this talk.  These weren't war stories, really, from this man who, after the war, as a civilian, was a counselor at a summer camp for French war orphans and discovered there that he enjoyed teaching, which was what he did for most of his life.

Talk of outrunning other fighters turned to how they trained pilots in the Navy to recognize enemy aircraft: they flashed silhouettes of enemy planes in front of you for a fraction of a second, and you had to get to the point where you could identify the plane after having seen it just for that very brief period of time.

"The one fellow who was our instructor, he'd flash a plane up on a screen in front of us -- just for a fraction of a second -- and ask us to identify it, and then he'd flash another and we'd have to identify that one, and then another and another... and then he'd flash a slide of a naked woman!  And there'd be an awkward silence in the classroom and then he'd laugh and then we'd relax, and then he'd show us some more planes."  And he smiled at the memory, and his wife laughed, and my parents and I laughed.

He laughed, and took a bite out of a piece of pastry, and thought for a moment.

"There was this fellow, an instructor.  He'd flash a plane up on a screen -- just a fraction of a second, he'd have it up there -- and then ask us to identify it.  And then he'd flash another up there, and another, and then he'd flash a picture of a woman, a naked woman!  Then there'd be silence, nervous silence.  And then he'd laugh and we'd relax and then he'd show us a bunch of other planes."  And he smiled at the memory, and his wife laughed, and my parents and I laughed, and his memories of his time sixty-five years ago as a fighter pilot were so vivid, and it was alright with me that he couldn't remember what had happened during the foggy period before he'd had a bite of his pastry.

Leaving New York

My cab driver this morning was another Italian-American guy.  This one's name was Joe.  He was about sixty-five.  His face, and particularly his nose, implied a life of heavy drinking.  He seemed like a sad man, in a tears-of-a-semi-happy-clown way.  He told me that he'd lived in New York all his life and never thought he'd retire, but that he was going to sell his medallion in a few months and move to Knoxville, which is where his daughter lives.  I asked him if he minded telling me how much he'd be able to sell his medallion for (a medallion is what you need to operate a car as a yellow taxicab in New York: the driver needs a hack license, and the car needs a medallion).  He said that he'd paid $60,000 for his in the 1970s and would sell it for about $600,000 if he were to sell it today, which sounds about right based on what I've read about the cost of medallions.  They're sold through brokers on some sort of medallion exchange, and people take out mortgages to pay for them.

He said that he'd grown up on the Lower East Side, on Orchard Street.  He said that he'd belonged to a gang back then.  What they'd usually do, he said, was put on their gang clothes and go up to Hell's Kitchen and beat up Irish guys.  "That's how it was then," he said, laughing, his laugh giving me the sense that he didn't have a problem with Irish-Americans anymore.  "That's how it was."

He talked about what it was like driving a cab here during the 1980s.  "Once a rock band got in my cab, and they couldn't pay the full fare, so they paid me in marijuana.  That's how it used to be!"  I told him that my dad, a retired lawyer in Blue Hill, Maine, was paid in scallops once.  "There you go!  People used to do that.  When I was growing up on Orchard Street, my mother used to cook Italian food for the Jews and they'd wash our linens for us.  That's how it used to be."

In Chinatown, he told me that his father used to say that the food down in Chinatown was pretty good, but that "you didn't see any cats or dogs in the alleys!", and then explained the joke, which didn't really need explaining, but I didn't mind.

I asked him how he liked the Lower East Side now.  It doesn't bother me that the Lower East Side has been gentrified, but I don't know how I'd feel about it if I'd grown up there when it was a very different place.

"It's alright," he said.  "I drop kids off there sometimes.  I see things and I remember things.  Oh!"  We were stopped at a light on Centre Street where it runs into Kenmare Street in what is now called SoHo, not too far from the Lower East Side.  He was pointing at the far right-hand corner of the intersection and said that that's where he used to go with his father on Thanksgiving morning to buy a turkey.  There'd be live turkeys there on the corner, and you'd choose one and they'd kill it for you, right there on the street.  "Or chicken," he said, when they couldn't afford a turkey at Thanksgiving.

A beautiful black woman tried to flag him down, not realizing that he wasn't for hire because he already had a passenger.  "That I'll miss: beautiful women waving at me in my cab!  Smiling...  You don't think about that, passengers don't, but I'm inside, I see things from in here, beautiful women waving at me.  That I'll miss," and he laughed.

"All this New York," he said.  "I need to take it all down to Tennessee with me, down to Knoxville.  All these stories.  I think they'd like them down there.  I have to do that."

Socks

Overheard on Astor Place just now, a man speaking into his mobile phone: "Hi Honey, we're out of toilet paper again.  I had to use a sock this morning.  Call me."

Christ.

But What about The Price of Tea in Hong Kong?

I posted this on Wednesday, on Twitter: "Palin addresses investors in Hong Kong http://bit.ly/3uSlw. What could she POSSIBLY hv to say to thm? Can see HK from roof if use telescope?"  I couldn't work out why high-powered investor-type people would have any interest in hearing the thoughts of a former half-term governor of a small American state who knows little or nothing about finance.  One of the more preposterous things she said during last year's presidential campaign, of course, was that being a governor of a state which is close to Russia amounted to foreign-policy expertise (paraphrased on SNL by Tina Fey as "I can see Russia from my house!").  I picked up on that theme here, if that's not extremely clear.

A few hours after this tweet (awful word, just awful), I heard on a social-networking site from a former colleague who said the following in response: "Unlike geniuses such as VP Joe Biden (ahem)."  My former colleague is, of course, entitled to his opinion of Joe Biden's intellect.  (And I encourage anyone to disagree with me publicly when I say things in a public forum.)  My opinion is that the vice president is smart and well informed.  He gets some flack for being (by his own admission) a gaffe machine (e.g. referring to Barack Obama during last year's campaign as "Barack America"), but I've never sensed that lack of intellect was the cause of these gaffes.  Furthermore, I have nothing against this former colleague, who at any rate has a sense of humor about Palin, allowing, in a subsequent exchange, that "she sounds like an extra from Slingblade."

But here's the thing: I didn't mention Joe Biden in my Twitter post.  The intellectual capacity of Sarah "Death Panels" Palin has nothing to do with the intellectual capacity of Vice President Biden.  If Biden were a stupid man, this would not make Palin any smarter.  If Biden were a "genius," this would not make Palin any stupider.  I wouldn't mention this business about my tweet (awful word, just awful) having nothing to do with the vice president, except that this isn't the first time I've heard some version of "well, what about X, though???  He's downright Y!!!"

I heard it frequently during the Bush years.  I'd say something about Bush (that I felt he was not competent; that while being smart enough, perhaps, he showed an appalling lack of intellectual curiosity, resulting in a dangerous sort of ignorance; that he was simple-minded; that he was arrogant; etc.), and the reply would occasionally be something like, "well, would you prefer that John Kerry had won in 2004?"  As it happens, I would have preferred John Kerry or SpongeBob SquarePants or just about anyone to President Bush (especially the second time around: we re-elected President Bush, for God's sake).  But the question is irrelevant.  If Kerry were a semi-literate semi-moron, this fact would have no bearing on whether or not President Bush handled Katrina in a stunningly irresponsible way, or trashed America's reputation around the world, or generally did quite a bit of harm to my country over the course of eight years (or, that's my opinion -- but if I'm wrong, the proof of my wrongless will not have anything to do with John Kerry).

A slight variation on this occurs if one disparages, say, Bill O'Reilly.  The response is often something similar to, "oh, like Keith Olbermann is any better???"  Well, no, actually, and I can't stand Michael Moore either, but what does this have to do with anything?  If Olbermann were not on the air, would O'Reilly be any less of a pompous windbag?  (The answer is "no, he wouldn't be"; we know this because he was being a pompous windbag on Fox long before Olbermann got a show on MSNBC.)

I don't know...  The level of discourse in this country hasn't been lower in my lifetime.  And I'm biased: I'm a Democrat, and a liberal.  But doesn't it seem to be the case that while we have fringe people on the left who make as little sense as fringe people on the right, the signal-to-noise ratio is lower on the mainstream right than it is on the mainstream left, at least at the national level?  Isn't this, come to think of it, reflected in Congress, where among Democratic legislators we have lefties and liberals and moderates and even a few conservatives, while among Republican legislators there's a much smaller range of political opinion?  And for that matter, reflected in our current President, who -- despite accusations of "socialism" and "Marxism" and "Maoism" -- has thus far disappointed many liberals for not being "liberal enough"?

I don't know.  I suppose I'm not contributing much to the discourse myself with my comments about former Governor Palin claiming to be able to see Hong Kong from her roof.  It's just that it's stunning to me that anyone in this country takes Sarah Palin seriously.  And when the "defense" of Palin is, to paraphrase, "well Biden's no genius," instead of addressing the issue head-on of whether Palin is or is not a rather limited person, this tells me...  I'm not sure what it tells me.  It tells me that something's off in our country at the moment.  That something's off.

Ya Twit, Ya

AvocadoBlog has been Twittering -- sorry, "tweeting" (awful word, just awful) -- for a little over a week, but you have been missing out on that because you do not follow AvocadoBlog on Twitter.  The way, you see, to keep up with AvocadoBlog's Twitterings -- sorry, "tweets" (awful word, just awful) -- is to follow AvocadoBlog.  On Twitter.  Which you can do by clicking the "Follow AvocadoBlog on Twitter" link, which is to your right.  Or you can just click here.  Your choice.

The Most Rambling Post I've Ever Written (It's Sort of about National Parks)

I went to the Ken Burns thing in Central Park last night.  (Actually, thanks to the generosity of some very thoughtful friends, I watched it from the VIP area.  It's rare that I end up in a VIP area, which I think is sort of odd.  You see, I'm generally, mistakenly taken for a mere P.  Occasionally I'm taken for an IP.  Erroneously.  Because I am, of course, a VIP -- I'll put you in touch with my parents if you don't believe me -- VI indeed.  And it's nice to be recognized as such and gain access to the open bar -- I don't drink, but it's a gesture that I appreciate, plus they had what seemed like very high quality club soda -- and free Terra Chips that they have in the better VIP areas.  It's just frustrating, is all, to be a P who is VI, perhaps even EI -- "extraordinarily"; was that unclear? -- but not, generally, to have this fact acknowledged in a public way.  Publicly, in a way for my fellow VIPs, and of course for NIPs -- "not"; was that unclear? -- to see.  Anyway, I have a Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea blanket now and you don't.  Maybe I'll lend it to you, if you're a VIP who didn't happen to be there in the park last night.  You are a VIP, are you not?  Oh... Well, maybe I'll let you fondle it then, if you wash your hands first.  You know, swine flu.  Sorry.)

I will be serious now.  The purpose of the "thing" in the park (there were speeches, and videos, and excellent live music, with Burns as emcee) was to promote KB's latest documentary, about America's national parks, which KB believes to be "America's best idea."  I'd never thought of our national parks in that way: as a "best idea" -- or even as an "idea" at all which someone had to have before the parks themselves came into existence.  I suppose I'd given this some thought, but not much.  After all, the Grand Canyon was always there, was it not?  Well, yes, but Grand Canyon National Park was not always there.  That is, it wasn't always the case that the Grand Canyon had been set aside as a place where everyone was welcome and more important, where everyone would always be welcome.  Burns speculated that were it not for the existence of these parks, extremely expensive houses would dot the edge of the Grand Canyon.  It would be private land, set aside for people with enough money to afford the expensive privilege of walking to the edge of the canyon and looking down into it.

He was right, of course, Burns: absolutely right.  The idea that a young country would set aside enormous swaths of some of its most beautiful land so that everyone, not just wealthy people, could enjoy it, is an extraordinary one if you think about it, and an extraordinarily democratic one.  (And a socialistic one -- socialistic? socialist? whatever, a commie one -- Teddy Roosevelt, Socialist.)  Because left to the whims of the free market -- and I am a big fan of the free market in many ways -- well, see above.  Two-acre houses overhanging the Grand Canyon...  I do ache, btw, to have this inane talk of "socialism" leave our national dialogue, if the way we talk to each other now even qualifies as "dialogue."  Of course we're socialists in America in some ways.  If you went to a public grade school or high school, you received your education from a socialist institution -- No?  Well, yes; there's no reason schools have to be free, nor have they always been, nor that they have not to be for profit, right? -- and you turned out alright, didn't you?  Has there been a country, actually, whose economy was purely capitalistic?  Would anyone really want to live there any more than anyone would want to live in a purely socialist or communist one?  It's 3:58 in the morning and I'm rambling, dear readers.)

So, right: score one for our imperfect but great nation.

Anyway, all of this talk about national parks reminded me of a piece in the Atlantic several years ago, written by a Frenchman who was doing sort of an updated Tocqueville-type exploration of America.  This was six years ago, the days of "freedom-fries" and such.  And while this French person whose name I can't remember had, as you'd expect, good and bad things to say about the U.S., during a time when the U.S. had alienated a good part of the world, just the fact that a non-American had anything good to say about America felt like a little gift.  And one of the good things he had to say was about the Everglades, which of course are somewhat protected from harm on account of being located in Everglades National Park.  He noted that in Florida, there was heated debate about whether or not to provide additional protection to the Everglades.  Environmentalists felt that more protections were needed; others thought that things were fine as they were.  (Or something; I may have the details wrong, but the point was, people were arguing about the Everglades.)  This Tocquevillesque guy* pointed out that in France, such discussions do not occur because in France, there are no protected wilderness areas to argue about.  (No protected wilderness areas or very few, I suppose -- there must be some in France, mustn't there?...)

This business about the Everglades, and the fact that America has actively preserved the Everglades (located just a few miles west of the sprawling Miami/Dade metropolitan area, no less) made me feel superior to the French, which was nice, because at that time, the French were spending a good deal of time feeling superior to us (and calling us "arrogant," and we were behaving arrogantly, America was, but coming from the French, I mean, I ask you...) on account of things like the asinine "freedom fries" BS which was going down here at the time.

Anyway: national parks as "America's best idea?"  I'm not sure.  We invented freedom in America, which was also a pretty good idea...  I'm sorry; I'm tired, and I jest.  I'm really not sure what the "best" idea we've had here in America is, but this one was a pretty good one... 

...Say, what in God's name is this post about, anyway?  Aside from Terra Chips (see above), the Everglades (see above), the lack of "relationships" in France (see below; you haven't gotten to that part yet), lines at airports (again, see below)...  I guess it's about this: the United States, like any nation I know of, is a flawed place.  I believe that many of our worst qualities were on display during eight years of two Bush administrations, and still are to some extent.  But there are some things that America does very, very well.

For example, the United States has not only welcomed many millions of immigrants to its shores (for most of us, of course, these are our ancestors); it has also integrated these immigrants into society, not just allowing but encouraging them to participate fully in it.  No, immigrants have not always been treated well here in the U.S.  Yes, the issue of (legal and illegal) immigration from Mexico is a divisive issue here.  But there's something ironic and wonderful about the fact that the "Great Satan" has no radicalized Muslim population of any size.  This is not the case in Britain, or France, or Germany, or Holland, or other several European nations.  I'm not sure what it says about America, so often accused (sometimes fairly) of xenophobia, isolationism, nativism, and such, that somehow, despite these real or perceived flaws, we've thrived on wave after wave of immigration.

And I guess I feel, after hearing Burns speak about it, that a country which has the foresight to set aside wilderness areas as permanently protected sanctuaries -- not only on environmental grounds but also for the enjoyment of anyone who cares to enjoy them -- has done a good thing.

I guess that's what this post is about.  I'm still not sure what queuing maritime Canadians have to do with any of this though.  My guess, though, is that this will NOT be one of my posts which they preserve in a climate-controlled room in the Library of Congress, but that's okay.

*He had some other interesting observations as well, the French sociologist or whatever he was.  He noted that in English, people speak of "our relationship": that is, this thing which exists between two people who are romantically involved with each other.  He found this interesting and confusing: there seemed to him to be three parties involved in, say, a marriage: the husband, the wife, and the relationship.  He said that there wasn't this notion in French (or at least, in France) of a "relationship," of a thing which existed between two people.  There were just the two people, and they felt a certain way about each other...  He'd also witnessed Americans patiently lining up* in post-9/11 airport-security lines, and guessed that the French would never tolerate being forced to stand in these lines, or not, at least, without complaining vigorously.  That they would have been much less polite and well behaved than Americans were, basically.  I felt that Americans were not being particularly polite or very well behaved at the time with their disparaging talk of "old Europe" and "you're either with us or you're against us" and so on, so I liked that at least in this one sense, a Real French Person felt that we were more well behaved than his fellow French peeps.

*And not to go all David Foster Wallace on your ass, rest his soul, with the nested footnotes, but speaking of who's polite and doesn't mind lining up and waiting their turn and whatnot, this Americans-in-the-TSA-lines-at-the-airport thing in turn reminds me of an observation my dad made once about Canadians (anglo-Canadians, these were, not French ones).  We were in Canada for some reason, in New Brunswick, and there was dinner for a large number of people, served buffet style.  And my dad noticed that the Canadians were all nicely lined up, patiently waiting their turn to take their Canadian food from the table and put it on their paper plates, unlike, he felt, Americans would have done; Americans, he felt, would just charge the table or something.  I don't know -- this was in the early '80s; maybe we're more polite now.  Or maybe we've always been ruder than Canadians but more polite than the French.

Where Have You Gone, Jason Schwartzman?

At age eighteen or nineteen, Jason Schwartzman created what I think was one of the great comedic characters of the 1990s as Max Fischer in Rushmore: a fifteen-year-old student at a prep school who falls for a grade-school teacher at the school, with whom Bill Murray is also in love.  One of the weirder love triangles in cinema.  To refresh your memory:

What I want to know is what went wrong with Schwartzman after that.  He was brilliant in Rushmore partly because Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson wrote a great part in Max Fischer.  But he made it his own; he inhabited the role completely; he killed it; he was just fantastic.  And since then, he's done... what?  A bunch of movies, and in these movies -- many of them great ones -- he plays almost exactly the same guy: an affectless, zero-charismatic zero who sucks the energy out of every scene he's in.  I watch a scene with Schwartzman in it and I want for it to be over, hoping that the next scene is Schwartzman-free.

I haven't seen all of his films.  But I've seen I Heart Huckabees, and Funny People, and The Darjeeling Limited, and Marie Antoinette...  And Shopgirl, although I don't remember him in that (and/but try to imagine not remembering the Schwartzman of Rushmore in any film, no matter how small the role).  It's not just that Schwartzman wasn't funny in these films; not being funny is fine (although several of these films I've seen him in were... you know, comedies...).  The problem is that he wasn't anything in them.  He was barely in them, despite often having a prominent role.  For Christ's sake, even his hair is the same in most of them (an affectless, zero-charismatic Jackson Browne-inspired non-cut).

Pardon me, but what the fuck is wrong with this dude?  What happened?

I don't mean to be cruel.  The fact is that I feel sorry for J.S., and also, I want for him to come back and dome something else great, something else completely different from what I've seen before, from him or anybody.  I wonder if he senses that he peaked at the beginning of his career and nosedived shortly after that, if that's indeed what happened.  It's a horrible thing when great artists/writers/musicians/etc. lose that creative spark that made them great.  He does keep getting roles... Is it me?  Are there people who think that Schwartzman post-Rushmore kicks ass?  It's not Schwartzman, it's me, maybe?

Maybe.  He plays Jonathan Ames's alter-ego, Jonathan Ames, in the upcoming HBO comedy Bored to Death, which, I've just realized, premieres tonight.  I hope this works out for him.  It's a scary thing to me that someone can go from great to breathtakingly not great in a very short amount of time.

Is, Is

I have been disappointed by President Obama's attempts at overhauling the dreadful and embarrassing health-care system we have in America.  It's not that I think his ideas are too liberal, or not liberal enough.  Rather, I simply think that he hasn't done a particularly good job of selling his plans for reform, and I think that he failed, inexplicably, to anticipate the ferocity of the opposition to his agenda.  It seems to me, too, that he failed to anticipate that satisfying the needs of both left-leaning as well as more moderate or conservative* Democratic lawmakers would be tricky.  (He seems to be back on track now, maybe since his speech to Congress last week.  I hope so.)

It also seems to me that the president has done a poor job of explaining to Americans why things like the bailout (sorry, "socialization") of auto manufacturers and banks was necessary if the goal was to keep a depressed economy from throwing itself down the stairs.  And I can only scratch my head at lapses in judgment such as the one that led the president to say that Cambridge, Massachusetts police handled the arrest of Henry Louis Gates "stupidly."

But, some perspective: it's been eight months.  Seems to me it's much to early to judge this president's capacity to govern effectively.  (Polls show that other people don't think it's too early, and that's bad, because polls matter: they're a measure of political capital, and Obama will need plenty of that if his presidency isn't to wilt away as Carter's did.)  He's been in office for only eight months, during which he's been dealing with an extremely shaky economy, two wars, the Guantanamo issue, the ongoing threat of international terrorism, and a lot of other stuff, while at the same time attempting to implement an ambitious domestic agenda.  Also, he's not President Bush, which is good.  And also his vice president isn't Dick Cheney, also good.  I'm willing to cut him some slack.

But I am not willing to cut him any slack on one thing.  I am not willing to cut him slack on his repeated use of "is, is."  What I refer to is this:

Part of the frustration I have is, is that on the Republican side there are wonderful people who really operated on the basis of pragmatism and common sense and getting things done.

That's the president, as quoted in The Hill (discussing health-care reform).

"Is, is."

Please understand: "is, is" is not a thoughtful pause.  It's not, "Part of the frustration I have is [thoughtful pause...] is that on the Republican side..."  It's "is, is," spoken almost as one word.  With a comma.  With a comma, not an ellipsis.  And I think it's a disgrace.  A disgrace, I tell you, and the President is guilty of isising on a regular basis; I noticed it first during the primaries last year.

It's not, by the way, Obama's invention.  I would hold him in significantly lower regard if he'd engineered the isis virus rather than merely having caught it somewhere.  No, I first became aware of a trend toward people mistakenly thinking that two ises are better than one in 2005 or 2006.  I heard it almost exclusively in meetings -- not, usually, in casual conversation, and not in written form.  Generally speaking, it was the corporate-speak types who used it.  The people I liked and respected generally said "is."  The people I disliked and did not respect tended to say "is, is."

Anyway, I don't understand why the president is assaulting our language in this manner.  How odd, too, coming from the mouth of a man who so clearly understands the power of language.  I don't like it, and I would like for it to stop, please

That is all for now; thank you.

*I'd also like to say that I'm tired of liberals -- and I'm certainly a liberal -- carping about moderate and conservative "Blue Dog" representatives' unwillingness to toe the liberal party line.  Democrats have healthy majorities in both houses partly because these more conservative Democrats were elected in 2006 and 2008.  I think it's a healthy thing to have a broad range of political beliefs represented in a political party.  Plus, these There is no such range in the GOP in either the Senate or the House.  Democrats have the "big tent" now.  This is a good thing.  I guess this doesn't have much to do with "is, is," does it.  I'm off-topic again.  Sorry.

Arrogant Idiot.

Commodities vs. Capacity: a Clarification

Overheard on East 10th Street just now: a man speaking into his cell phone at a volume louder than talking-volume but not as loud as yelling-volume, saying this: "...and that's fine, but you need to understand this: commodities are commodities, but capacity is capacity.  Okay?  Right?  Capacity is capacity.  It's that simple.  ...Good, I'm glad that's clear now."

I'm glad that's clear now too.